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Brahms' German Requiem
By Paul S. Minear¹

"We may perhaps best sense the temper of Brahms' faith by the whole body of his religious music. Schumann had said of listening to his music: 'We stand in the wonderful view of the spiritual world.' The best clue to his personal faith is provided by the texts which he adopted for the music. Most notable is the text of the Requiem itself."

LET us first look at Johannes Brahms as a man and as a musician, with special reference to the period before the first production of the Requiem. Then let us consider the Requiem itself, asking how and why these particular words should have commended themselves to the composer.

I

The first performance of three movements of the Requiem was in 1867 in Vienna. The first major performance of six movements was April 10, 1868, in the Bremen cathedral. The composition of the work took place during the previous decade. In 1867 Brahms was thirty-four years old; thus we are concerned with his story between his twenty-fourth and his thirty-fourth years. Three pictures of him during this period have been sketched by three of his friends.

Florence May, a British pianist, who studied under Brahms, gives her impressions of Brahms shortly after the date of the Requiem.² She describes him as below middle height with a square, solidly built

¹ In this essay I seek to pay a small portion of my debt to Johannes Brahms for his music, especially his German Requiem, and to my friend, Emory Leland Gallup, minister of music at the First Methodist Church, Evanston, Illinois, from 1940 until his death in 1947. Dr. Gallup first introduced me to the wide range of resonance, both theological and musical, which great music presents to the listening ear and heart. As organist and choir director, he induced in his singers that fear and trembling which accompany the worship of God through music. And none of the anthems or oratorios evoked a greater penumbra of spontaneous awe (the mysterium tremendum of R. Otto) than the Requiem.
² The Life of Johannes Brahms, London, 1905.

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figure. He was "the blonde type of German, with fair, straight hair, which he wore rather long. . . . His most striking physical characteristic was the grand head with its magnificent intellectual forehead … (with blue eyes) remarkable from their expression of intense mental concentration." He was near-sighted and often used a double eyeglass which hung on a black cord around his neck. His manner was "absolutely simple and unaffected." He was kind-natured but very reticent, sociable and yet hard to get to know. He had a horror of pretense, of artificiality, of being lionized, but among friends whom he could trust he was lighthearted and gay. He was a lover of tobacco, and in small groups where the ladies consented he would play the piano while smoking a cigarette or cigar.³ As a teacher of pianoforte, Miss May found him "absolutely ideal; strict and absolute . . . gentle and patient and encouraging. . . . He knew exhaustively and could teach… by the shortest possible methods every detail of technical study…. (He was) all-capable, single-hearted, inspired and inspiring, . . . unwearied in his efforts to make his pupil grasp the full musical meaning of whatever work might be in hand."⁴ He shunned virtuosity and affectation, seeking only to "plunge into the innermost meaning of whatever music he happened to be interpreting, exhibiting all its details and expressing its very depths."⁵ He was an ardent German patriot and a passionate lover of nature. It was his custom to rise at four or five A.M. and, after a cup of coffee, to walk into the woods "to enjoy the delicious freshness of the morning and to listen to the birds." When Miss May asked what she could do to improve her playing most quickly, he answered, "You must walk constantly in the forest."⁶ He loved seclusion where he could devote himself to composition. Singleness of purpose, simplicity, kindness, sensitiveness to poetry, to nature, and to friends-these are the traits that impressed Miss May.

Albert Dietrich gives a comparable picture, based on many visits by Brahms to his home in Oldenburg where Dietrich was organist and musical director.⁷ "Brahms," he writes, "was the pleasantest visitor imaginable, always amiable and unassuming, always in good spirits, a child himself when with the children to whom he was de-

³ Ibid., pp. 2-4.
⁴ Ibid., pp. 9-10.
⁵ Ibid., P. 21.
⁶ Ibid., pp. 4, 8.
⁷ A. Dietrich and J. V. Widmann, Recollections of Johannes Brahms, New York, 1899.

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voted."⁸ "How delightful was the life in our home! Even the breakfast hour was interesting, and thanks to Brahms' high spirits, merry. How enjoyable and cozy were the evenings."⁹ "His disposition is as amiable and cheerful as full of depths of seriousness."¹⁰ Dietrich mentions three other typical characteristics. The first was Brahms' restlessness and his desire for a settled existence. He was constantly traveling-for concerts, for vacations, for inspiration, to visit friends, for appointments-but he always longed for a single home, a permanent job, and steady routine. Yet he never could feel happy to stay long in one city or job. He did not want to be bound down by fixed responsibilities and schedules, and yet he did not enjoy the life of wandering. Many times he planned to give it up, but he could not realize these plans.

A second trait which Dietrich stresses was his awkwardness and brusqueness in many social situations. He liked to tease. Often this caused unintended offense which he then aggravated until it became a painful misunderstanding. He loved to deflate the pompous, to shock curious flatterers, and to engage in vigorous argument over politics, philosophy, or music. He could be extremely caustic and even cruel with his tongue.

A third trait was his extreme devotion to family and friends, to his father and mother, and most of all to Robert and Clara Schumann. When Robert Schumann was committed to a mental hospital, Brahms spent months in self-forgetful service to Clara and the children. He visited Schumann often in the hospital, rejoicing at every symptom of improvement, or sorrowing deeply at every turn for the worse. Sometimes he observed Schumann for hours from a hidden place; once he stayed with him four hours, playing to him and playing duets with him.¹¹ On one occasion he left the hospital for a trip to the Alps, but homesickness drew him back to the hospital to be near his friend.¹²

Joseph Widmann, who gives us a third portrait of the composer, was a member of a highly musical parsonage near Basel. He writes of his meeting with Brahms in 1866: "A beautiful meteor had flashed across the horizon of my life."¹³ "Both by his personal appearance

⁸ Ibid., p. 43.
⁹ Ibid., p. 61.
¹⁰ Ibid., p. 46.
¹¹ Ibid., p. 26.
¹² Ibid., p. 23.
¹³ Ibid., p. 95.

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and powerful playing, which was very different from a purely technical display, Brahms at once impressed me as a strong personality. . . . The total impression was one of consummate strength, both physical and moral. The broad chest, the herculean shoulders, the powerful head which he threw back energetically when playing, the fine thoughtful brow shining as with an inward light, and the two Teutonic eyes, with the wonderful, fiery glance . . . all betrayed an artistic personality replete with the spirit of true genius. In his countenance there lay . . . such a promise of victory . . . such a radiating cheerfulness of mind reveling in the exercise of its power. . . . "¹⁴

Brahms was an inveterate reader, borrowing books constantly from his friends, in spite of the fact that his own library was well stocked with books in such diverse fields as poetry, fiction, travel, drama, linguistics, politics, philosophy, discovery, art, history, and theology. His books were sprinkled with "numerous marginal notes and annotations." Karl Gairinger tells of Brahms' boast that "he could always instantly lay his hand on those books he valued-for example, the Bible-even in the dark."¹⁵ He would interrupt a music lesson to expound the meaning of some passage in Goethe.¹⁶ Widmann speaks of Jakob Burckhardt, of Nietzsche, of Stanley's Africa, as being favorites of the musician. "I have never seen anyone," writes Widmann, "evince such fresh and constant interest in the phenomena of life, whether of nature, art, or even technical industry." He was capable of untiring mental activity, with a "quiet, constant light on his face." He had that "mental cheerfulness which a thoroughly matured, faithful and honest mind must gain from constant, intelligent contemplation of things in this world."¹⁷

Widmann indicates the breadth of Brahms' mental horizon by telling of a conversation in which he mentioned to Brahms the Theological Reform Movement which was then (1874) at its height in Switzerland and which Widmann felt offered "the best solution of religious problems." "Brahms showed his colors immediately, by denouncing this movement as a half-measure, unable to satisfy either religious yearnings on the one hand or a philosophy striving for complete freedom on the other."¹⁸ Thus a Viennese musician showed

¹⁴ Ibid., P. 94.
¹⁵ Brahms: His Life and Work, London, 1948, p. 328.
¹⁶ May, op. cit., p. 16.
¹⁷ Op. cit., pp. 122-123.
¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 99-100.

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keen interest in philosophical and theological developments in Switzerland.

F. May believes that Brahms had formed, by the age of thirty-four, a very clear conception both of the purpose of his life and of the best means for achieving that purpose. His aim was "to give the most complete possible expression in his musical creations to the best that was in him." His method was "to lay himself open to every kind of influence which could healthily foster the ideal side of his nature, and more or less completely to eschew all others. . . . Brahms knew that not only his intellect but his mind and spirit and fancy must be constantly nurtured if they were to bring forth the highest of which they were capable; therefore he arranged his life so that these should be fed ever and always by poetry and literature and art, by solitary musing, by participation in so much of life as seemed to him to be real and true, and above all and in the highest degree, by the companionship of nature."¹⁹ It is not strange, then, that Brahms should have become "one of the few whom we feel to be thinkers in music; his whole work embodies a philosophy of life none the less definite for not being expressed, or perhaps inexpressible in words."²⁰

II

What, we may now ask, was the family and personal background of this philosopher in music? He had been born in Speck Lane, Hamburg, in 1833. In this section of Old Hamburg were dark, narrow streets and tall, gabled, and crowded houses--the commonplace reality of a bare and repulsive poverty."²¹ His father, who was twenty-seven years old at Johannes' birth, had come to Hamburg penniless and uneducated to seek a musical career. He had slender professional talent, but was shrewd, upright, and diligent. He made a scanty living by playing for chance audiences in street restaurants and for sporadic engagements in dance-halls and beer gardens. His financial situation improved slowly as through twelve years' work he became a regular and reliable contra-bassist in some of the humbler orchestras of Hamburg. At Johannes' birth the mother was forty-four. She was the daughter of the landlord of one of the father's rooming houses . . . a small, plain woman, of poor health and with a bad limp. For a time she helped the family income by a tiny

¹⁹ Op. cit., p. 8.
²⁰ E. Newman in Ralph Hill, Brahms, London, 1933, p. 141.
²¹ May, op. cit., p. 55.

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business in needles, cotton, and tapes. She was described by a Hamburg neighbor as "a little withered mother who busied herself unobtrusively with her own affairs, and was not known outside her dwelling."²² There were three children, a sister older than Johannes and a brother younger. The family moved often during Johannes' childhood, but always remained in crowded, poor, and simple apartments. Theirs was a poor but honorable home, in which perhaps the greatest asset was the great affection of the parents for the children.

Johannes' musical education began at home where as a tiny child he showed unusual aptitude. Recognizing this aptitude, his parents managed to begin formal lessons with a piano teacher, O. Cassel, when Johannes was eight. His first playing was in dance halls and taverns, late at night. By the age of ten, he had shown such genius that it was suggested that he should be taken on a tour to America to make money as a prodigy. To prevent such a fate, Cassell persuaded an eminent teacher named Marxsen to undertake the instruction. To accomplish this, Johannes' father and his musical friends arranged a benefit concert, a concert at which the ten-year old boy played with remarkable skill.

In 1853 a gypsy violinist from Hungary persuaded the young musician to accompany him on a tour through the cities of Germany. It was during this tour that Johannes made a number of friends who were to open a wider prospect and to provide counsel, inspiration, and support. These were quick to recognize his talent in both recital and composition. Among them were Joachim (Hanover), Robert and Clara Schumann (Dusseldorf), and Franz Liszt. Liszt, however, was at the time the idol and leader of a new school of music with which the young Brahms would have nothing to do. Between them developed quickly a feud which lasted many years. The Schumanns, on the other hand, began an enduring and fruitful comradeship with Brahms. In fact, Robert Schumann wrote an article hailing Brahms in the highest terms as the coming great composer, as an artist "at whose cradle graces and heroes mounted guard." Thus, at twenty, the boy from Hamburg was thrown into the center of German musical controversy and attention. This introduction to fame stirred in him both delight and dread, great embarrassment and a great sense of obligation to merit Schumann's confidence.

²² Ibid., P. 53.

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Brahms spent the next three years in close association with the Schumanns, who made Johannes a virtual member of the family and who introduced him to a large circle of musical friends. At the Schumann household Brahms' chamber music and his Liebeslieder found a congenial setting. The musicians played together, arranged concerts together, and composed many works under the inspiration of one another. This almost idyllic period was terminated by the sudden terrible illness of Robert Schumann. When his friend died, Brahms gave up everything in order to stand by the widow and the six children. His friendship for Clara Schumann now developed into an ardent love, which became the source of great inner turmoil until they both recognized the impossibility of marriage.

Johannes remained unmarried, primarily because of his artistic career. He often wished for marriage, but did not feel he could offer a wife the security she deserved. In a period when his music was often received with icy coldness or violent hissing, he did not wish to subject a woman to this animosity. Later on when admiring females would ask him if he were married, he would reply, "It is my misfortune still to be unmarried, thank God!"

III

We now turn to a more direct study of the composition of the German Requiem, but first glance at the type of piety represented by the composer. From this distance it is difficult to get a clear profile of Brahms' own inner convictions. This is due in part to his "deep-rooted dislike for all display of solemnity" and a great reticence in betraying his deepest feelings. It is also due to the fact that most of his biographers have been primarily concerned with his musical career rather than with his faith. We know that his mother was extremely solicitous of his moral training as a child and that she instilled a basic religious orientation toward life. We find evidence to establish the fact of constant and informed use of the Bible.²³ This use began in primary school, where all the children-Jews, Catholics, and Protestants-listened to daily readings.²⁴ There is no record that Brahms ever held a church post as organist or choir director. He was staunchly Protestant, aware of current philosophi-

²³ Cf. Richard Specht, Johannes Brahms, New York, 1930, p. 16; Walter Niemann, Brahms, New York, 1929, p. 9.
²⁴ Specht, op. cit., p. 15.

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cal and theological issues, but not attracted by dogmatic or creedal narrowness. He was more closely akin to the liberal than to the orthodox Lutheranism of the nineteenth century. When on his trips to Italy he entered a cathedral, he was careful not to wound the sensibilities of those around him. If "the worshipers turned to look at the newcomer, he would never omit to feign to dip his finger in the benitier and lightly make the sign of the Cross, in order not to scandalize the believers by the intrusion of a heretic."²⁵

We may perhaps best sense the temper of Brahms' faith by the whole body of his religious music. Schumann had said of listening to his music: "We stand in the wonderful view of the spiritual world." The best clue to his personal faith is provided by the texts which he adopted for the music. Most notable is the text of the Requiem itself.

The most complete story of the history of the Requiem's composition may be found in Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms.²⁶ In 1856, during the sad task of going through the manuscripts left by Robert Schumann, Brahms discovered the title "Ein Deutsches Requiem." Between 1857-59, he wrote several short musical numbers, which contain, on the one hand, phrases and motifs reminiscent of Schumann's work, and on the other, themes to be taken up and developed in later work. Brahms himself thought of the Requiem as belonging to Schumann. In 1861, the composer chose certain biblical texts, with the help of a concordance, during a day spent in the woods near Hamburg with the manuscript. On returning home, however, be misplaced the manuscript and did nothing more about it for several years. His mother's death in 1865 provided a stimulus for renewing his work. In 1866 on a short trip home he discovered the missing notes and set about to complete the project. During that year he worked steadily, first at Karlsruhe, then at Winterthur, at Zurich, and at Baden-Baden. The first three movements, produced in Vienna in 1867, were accorded an extremely hostile reaction. On April 10, 1868, in the Bremen cathedral, Reinthaler conducted the first successful performance of six movements. In May, 1868, Brahms added another movement (the fifth) and the work was complete. It was then twelve years since Schumann had bequeathed him the idea for such a Requiem, ten years since the first musical

²⁵ J. Widmann, op. cit., p. 167.
²⁶ Berlin, 1904-1914, Vol. II.

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motifs had appeared, and seven years since he had begun the process of selecting the biblical texts.

Before looking more closely at those texts, we should observe a few of the major innovations in the new work. In the first place, Brahms broke consciously with the tradition of identifying a Requiem with the customary Catholic mass for the dead. He abandoned the customary Latin text and sequence, the ecclesiastical context, and the theological foundation common to Catholic practice. In the second place, Brahms' work is called "German," not only to indicate this departure from Roman precedent, but also to underscore the Protestant obligation and right to study the Bible in one's own language and to reflect on the biblical text freely but conscientiously. Brahms selected and arranged his own text from Luther's Bible with great care and insight. His habit of insisting on an authentic, pervasive marriage of music to words did not fail him here.

It is worth noting, in the third place. that Brahms tried to avoid having his Requiem associated with a particular confessional or dogmatic emphasis. At one time he indicated that his work might be thought of as "A Human Requiem."²⁷ There is nothing narrowly orthodox in his conception of the work, which is "addressed to all who believe, irrespective of creed." Even the name of Christ is expressly avoided, a fact which caused some difficulty. Reinthaler suggested the addition of a movement that would associate the work with the cardinal doctrines of ecclesiastical Christianity, but Brahms rejected this suggestion. Reinthaler wrote: "You occupy not merely religious, but essentially Christian ground in the work. The second number already alludes to the prophecy of the Lord's return and in the last but one the mystery of the resurrection of the dead is treated in detail. The central point around which everything turns in the consciousness of the Christian is, however, absent. 'If Christ be not risen then is our faith vain' . . . You say 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord henceforth' which can only mean: since the accomplishment of Christ's work of redemption." To this Brahms replied: "I confess that I should have left out the 'German' and substituted 'human.' Also that I dispensed with passages such as John 3:16 with all knowledge and intention. On the other hand, I have no doubt included much because I am a musician, because I required it, because I can neither argue away nor strike out a 'henceforth' from

²⁷ May, op. cit., p. 393.

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my venerable parts."²⁸ Because of this absence of explicit mention of Christ, permission to give the Requiem annually in the Bremen cathedral was granted only if there were included a more positive affirmation of faith in the resurrection of Christ. This addition was usually Handel's, "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth."

We should not infer from this that Brahms was not himself rooted in Christian faith. He told a friend that the Requiem takes for granted an unshakeable confidence, but he added that this confidence does not eradicate the sorrow, the uncertainty, the doubts, the losses, which beset believer and unbeliever alike. He was concerned with the total community of mankind, the sorrowing members of all nations and creeds who, because of their common grief, stand in the need of an unlimited love. He was, therefore, inclined to interpret the biblical texts in terms that were genuinely humane and universal.

A fourth point worthy of note is that the Requiem is based on the conviction that it is the living rather than the dead who stand in need of consolation, peace, and confidence. The latin requiem was dominated by prayers for the dead as they faced the terrors of the last judgment. The motto of Brahms' music is, by contrast, "Blessed are they that mourn." Brahms had the more protestant and biblical emphasis: that mortality is a reality which must be faced and conquered by the living. At every moment of his lifetime man must recognize that "all flesh is grass" and must link the "sowing with tears" to the "reaping with joy." This Requiem is thus not so much a funeral dirge, a litany for the departed, as it is a musical celebration of faith and hope for all living things. In it there is nothing morbid or sepulchral, nothing of the stark terror of the Dies Irae. Both text and music breathe the dialectic of sorrow and joy, of grief and hope, of time and eternity. Moreover, this dialectic pervades almost every movement of the cantata. The dialectic, of course, is not present in response to a consciously doctrinal or dogmatic purpose, but as an expression of the universally intimate experience of man as man. In his music the composer attempts a direct, personal, musical reading of the facts of human existence. Beneath church dogmas, beneath even the words of Scripture, Brahms probes to the substratum of human experience expressed by those words. Surely part of the secret of the Requiem's spell is the depth in the words as articulated by the music. The texts helped

²⁸ May, op. cit., II, p. 393.

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to suggest the music; the music in turn enables the words to fly into the hearts of singers and audience.²⁹

IV

Glancing at the text of the words, several things immediately impress us. First is the range of citation. Eleven books of the Bible are rep-resented, and fifteen different chapters of these books, no chapter being cited in more than one movement. Second is the effective combination of the two Testaments. In three of the seven movements, verses from the Old Testament or the Apocrypha are fused with verses from the New Testament. Third is the predominance of the New Testament. The cantata begins with a beatitude from Matthew and ends with a beatitude from the Apocalypse. Where both Testaments are used in a single movement, the citation from the New Testament becomes the dominant motif. The citations used in the final edition of the Requiem are not exactly the same as those which Brahms first drafted in 1861, nor are they now found in the same order. Although we may not be able to trace the reasons for these changes, they offer proof that the artist refused to be bound by a pre-established blueprint. On the other hand, the continuity is sufficiently clear to prove that from first sketch to final composition, he conceived the work along the lines of a magnificent architectural plan. The citations were so well chosen that only a massive musical implementation would suffice to convey their message of joy and hope.

It seems to be impossible to locate any clear evidence as to Brahms' motives in choosing certain texts and rejecting others. His criteria remain hidden from later research. This does not, however, rule out various questions and conjectures. Let us consider the first movement, for example.

We may safely surmise that the composer wished to accent Matthew 5: 4 as a motto standing over the whole structure, as a theme that

²⁹ Cf. Niemann, op. cit., 420.

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applies to every movement. The accent rightly falls on the blessedness and the comfort extended to the mourners. The verses from the Psalm fit perfectly here-perhaps the most precise counterpart in the Old Testament to the word from Jesus. Yet not everyone starting from Matthew 5: 4 would arrive at Psalm 126: 5, 6. How was Brahms able to move so unerringly in this direction? Surely not by wooden consultation of the concordance alone, for there is no key word common to the two passages. Did the composer find in these two passages the epitome of the Gospel in the two Testaments? Did he realize that, in making the Psalm a commentary on the beatitude of Jesus, he was interpreting that beatitude as applying not only to the bereaved but to all men for whom the whole business of living is a matter of sowing precious seed? Surely the analogy of sowing and reaping is centrally biblical and at the same time intrinsically capable of musical interpretation. Was Brahms also aware that the motif of the return of exiles in the Psalms runs parallel to the same theme in the Gospels? In any case the opening movement is a quiet, triumphant expression of joy that grows out of the agonies of human labor. Let us not forget that such an introduction to a Requiem was completely new in both ecclesiastical and musical circles.

The second movement is a fascinating fusion of texts.

Why did the composer begin with I Peter 1: 24? Because these words seemed to him most appropriate to a funeral march? Because such a march is a celebration of the mortality of "all flesh" rather

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than the recognition of the passing of a beloved individual? Was his attention attracted to I Peter by the verbal link in 1: 23 to the sowing of seed in the Psalm (movement I) and in James (movement 11)? These are plausible guesses, but no more. Why did he ignore the preceding and succeeding words in Peter ("You have been born anew . . . of imperishable seed," and "That word is the good news which was preached to you")? Did he find these words too specifically Christian, too dogmatic in tone, too resistant to musical imagery? Perhaps he rejected them because they did not fit the demands of the dirge or because they seemed too premature and hasty an anticipation of joy. More striking perhaps is the fact that Brahms inserted the injunction to patience, the parable drawn from James, between two adjoining clauses of I Peter: between ". . . the flower decayeth," and "albeit the Lord's word. . . ." Why should Brahms conflate these two texts in this fashion? Did he wish to stress the need for patience musically as well as logically? Did he want to use again the image of sowing, in order to illustrate the long period of waiting between sowing and reaping? Was he fearful of too facile a resolution of the problem of mortality? In any case both words and music move toward an almost overwhelming resolution of transience, by way of patience, into the joy of the redeemed. The musical picture of redemption again suggests the joy of captives released and returning to Zion, to their true homeland. Brahms preferred this colorful picture both to I Peter's sequel (the good news) and to James' sequel ("the coming of the Lord is at hand"). It is clear that Brahms chose for use as the conclusion of each of the seven movements the most vivid and explicit images of comfort and hope. Just as I Peter is a quotation from Isaiah, so in reverse the quotation of Is. 35: 10 is fully akin in vocabulary and conception to the visions of the Apocalypse. In fact, every line of the Requiem text is alive with the whole message of the whole Bible.

V

Space does not permit discussion of the interrelation of texts and themes in the other five movements. Perhaps enough has been said to alert the reader to study for himself that interrelation. In each movement he can see how text and music blend into superb articulations of hope. This hope rests ultimately in God. It is dependent on his promise of defending his people. To dwell with him, praising him is both the origin and destiny of men. Into his hands may

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be safely committed all treasures, both now and at the end. His comfort gives strength to the sorrowing and this strength gives assurance of final comfort. Such comfort does not come to men quickly or easily but presupposes a sowing in tears, a waiting with patience for the harvest, the long trudge of the pilgrim, an acceptance of the fading of all earthly securities, a vulnerability to the travail of historical existence, and an openness to the mystery of death that is devoured by victory. The beatitude of God's joy encompasses men from beginning to the end. God redeems not only men's souls but their sowing in tears, their vanity and futility, their brief life span. God assures them of rest, of a home, of victory over death, and continued fruitfulness of their works. This redemption is not limited to men but extends to the natural order. Among men it is not limited to experience either before death or after death. Nor is it limited to a small group chosen for their wisdom, power, or merit. It is not a reward for membership in visible religious institutions. God is worthy to be praised because it is he who creates heaven and earth, and who redeems the good in all that he has created. Vanity, sin, death are embraced within his overarching purpose. Hope and joy are grounded in his love, his power, his promise, and in his coming.

Are we confronted in the German Requiem with Brahms' own musical and religious distillation of the essence of life and death? In a footnote to his discussion of the Requiem, Kalbeck reports that in a conversation with Brahms in 1897, the year of his death, Brahms said clearly and unequivocally that neither at the time of writing the Requiem nor since that time had he himself believed in immortality. This seems to me almost incredible unless what Brahms had in mind was a narrowly defined dogma of life after death against which he was protesting. Is it possible for a person to select these texts and to write this music without believing, at least in some recess of his heart, in the message of the text? Or does the fact that this message of hope comes from "an unbeliever" illustrate with awesome poignancy the tension between musical creativity and theological affirmation? Does it suggest, in Heideggerian terms, the degree to which the nothingness which the self confronts in its will to exist emerges into a positive power which constitutes the self? The composer's legacy includes this problem. But it also includes the music which provides its own language for speaking about the ultimate depths and heights.